Lament for My Twin
by Ithilien Archer
Summary: My name is Alice Cullen. I came into the world knowing I wasn't alone. Edward, my twin brother, was there with me. Tomorrow is our birthday, but for the first time in my life, he won't be there. He will never be there again." AU. AH.


**A/N: Alternate Universe obviously. OOC. All Human.**

**Warning: Character Death**

**Disclaimers: I don't own Twilight. **

Lament for My Twin

Tonight is one of those nights when everything blurred, as if the very air had turned slightly opaque with sadness. Sadness, grief, melancholy, mournful, only words that don't even begin to describe the dark void in me. Nothing can describe the ache in my heart. No word, no tears... nothing.

Crossing to the window in my room, I pressed my forehead against the window and stared into the darkness without really seeing it. Or maybe I was seeing it. It might as well be a reflection of the darkness within me. Never- ending dark that no light can penetrate. The glass is cool against my forehead. On other nights, it might've felt good, but I doubt anything could feel good tonight. Nevertheless, I half heartedly try as I cross the room once again to turn on my stereo. Perhaps music would help somewhat. My finger lingers on the on button long after the music has started. I try to focus on what song is playing, but I don't hear it. All I hear is the sweet music of a grand piano somewhere in my memory. All I hear is the music that my brother used to play. My finger presses on the button on it's own accord, bringing an end to the music that I could not hear. My legs carry me back to my bed and I numbly reach for the photo that is sitting on my nightstand. Barely a glance, and I find my legs collapsing under me. I fall to the ground willingly, clutching the photo to my chest as the first of many tears rolled down my cheeks.

My name is Alice Cullen. I'm not suffering from a broken heart tonight, but rather from the agony of a shattered soul.

I came into the world knowing I wasn't alone. Edward, my twin brother, was there with me. Tomorrow is our birthday, but for the first time in my life, he won't be there. He will never be there again.

The very thought tears a ragged hole through me and I gasp loudly. See, the pain is worse than any broken heart from a boy, there's no agony that can hold a candle to the pain of having half a soul ripped from one. Edward was the other half of my soul, had been since the beginning. We were the kind of twins that had a bond so strong that some would call unnatural. Many times, it seems we would be able to read each other's minds and we always knew when the other was hurt, sad, or something along those lines. Even when we weren't physically next to each other. I can't recall a time when we were at odds with each other. We were always there for each other, we were always together. Nothing had ever put a dent in the world that we lived in. No matter what had happened in our lives, we never once felt our connection threatened. And for some reason, I had believed that nothing would ever separate us. Maybe that's why it hurts so much now. I had no preparation whatsoever.

Strangely enough is the fact that I should've. The fear of losing my twin had been there since my earliest memories, and yet, I never had the courage to face it, always believing that through the love I have for him along with the rest of family's, he would live through everything life throws at him. Because he was the baby of the family and by far the most loved by everyone, I had made myself believe that he would survive anything. And I suppose he had, until now.

At birth, I outweighed Edward by four pounds, him being unnaturally small, just shy of two pounds. While I was perfectly healthy, doctors knew from the first breath that he drew, perhaps even before we were born, that he would have a hard life. For some reason, he was so weak that he couldn't get enough oxygen without the aid of a machine. They took him to the NICU soon after birth while I was wrapped in a fluffy blanket and handed to my parents. Of course I have no memories of it, but I knew that those first few days were hell for my parents. In between watching our older brother, Emmett, who was then two years old and taking care of me, they had to constantly worry about my twin.

The first few hours of my twin's life was spent fighting for life, as things went wrong in ways that it never should. His heart was barely strong enough to circulate blood, he couldn't get enough oxygen, couldn't maintain a good body temperature, couldn't eat... the list went on and on. And on top of all that, he developed a chest infection a day later. The first few months of his life was spent fighting infection after infection. Though my parents never really talked about how all they handled all that, I had a pretty good idea. Eventually, Edward was termed well enough to be released from the hospital and how everyone wished that had been the end of the nightmare. Fate, of course, had other plans for my beloved twin.

I never really knew why, but he was born with a very weak immune system. He was always on the border of being one of those people that had to live in a bubble, unable to come in contact with any harmful microbes for fear of them taking his life. I took care of him often when I was old enough to, and not once did I think it was a chore. I always did so willingly because he was my twin. My best friend. The other half of my soul. But even through a life of infections, diseases, and whatnot, he was happy. And since he was happy, we were happy. I was happy. The family was blessed with many good times spent when he wasn't sick. On such days, laughter could be heard throughout the day and all of us could almost believe that there was nothing wrong. That we weren't living in constant fear of losing my brother. That Edward was just a healthy child who loved music and his family, and who was loved in return by his family.

We were a tight knit family, trudging through life, looking out for one another. Fighting battles for one another. Though more often than not, it was Edward that needed our support, our love, to fight his battles with whatever took him down. All of us took turns caring for him, holding him when he needed someone to hang on to. We helped him get back on his feet, and he always seemed to be able to. Once back on his feet, he would be back to his smiling self and the whole family would breathe a sigh of relief before indulging in the happy memories. I'm not saying the happy times only existed when Edward wasn't sick, just that those were better times. We were a tight knit family. Love for each other bound us to each other, forming something akin to a shield around us. We had our own little world that we thrived in. Though everyone had the fear and I suspect everyone but me had been preparing for the loss of my brother, none of us saw it come. None of us had any idea that fate would take our world, punch a hole through our love, and make five into four so soon.

It was a few months ago, I can barely recall the exact time, Edward came home with a slight cough. Just a cold, the family hoped, though we quickly put him to bed. By this time in our lives, we knew the drill. We knew that even the most insignificant cold could turn into a monster that would steal him from us. The family took turns watching him all through that night. None of us complaining. We never complained simply because we loved him that much. Nothing changed that night and we held our breaths, hoping that it would remain that way.

I held him that night and in doing so, remembered what seemed like a life time of holding him when he was sick. He was never too heavy to me, though I couldn't explain why. I simply knew that he liked having someone to hold onto because even though he rarely admits it, the sickness that plagues him terrified him. With his head on my shoulder, I had brushed my fingers through his hair while praying to whoever was listening that whatever my twin was fighting was just a cold. And that he would be back in no time. Eventually, I decided to spend the night in his room and was lying on the mattress next to him, drifting off to sleep, when he woke with my name on his lips.

"Ali," he had whispered, knowing that I had not fallen asleep yet.

"Yes?" I answered, turning my head to see him turned towards me.

"Thank you," he said after a pause in which we simply smiled at each other. Sleep was chased away then, and we spent a few hours of the night talking about nothing and everything. During that whole time, I had battled with conflicting emotions. One part of me had felt soaring hope, while the other felt the dark tendrils of foreboding around my heart. I tried to ignore that darkness, succeeding only for a short while. Edward had looked perfectly fine, sounded perfectly fine as we whispered things to each other and stifled numerous bursts of laughter. I truly believed that he was going to be okay again. Right before we fell asleep, he said, "You're the best twin in the world, Alice."

And I replied, "You're the best twin in the world, Edward." Sleep took us then, and the foreboding used that time to wrap itself around my heart.

Throughout the next day, Edward seemed perfectly fine, though the cough occasionally surfaced. The family was ready to release the long held breath by the time the sun sank beneath the horizon. We never got the chance to release that breath of relief. The rate at which Edward deteriorated was terrifying. It seemed like all of a sudden, his small coughs turned into coughing spells so bad that he would gasp for breath afterwards. Not even a half an hour later, he was drenched in sweat with a temperature that climbed at an alarming rate. Fear took hold of the family then, took hold of me, but none of us knew that it was the beginning of the end for my beloved twin, Emmett's beloved brother, and our parents' beloved son. Two hours later, the whole family was rushing Edward to the hospital. His fever had climbed so high, that he had become incoherent and delirious. His breathing had become so labored that he had literally turned blue from the lack of oxygen.

That night, we found that he had a sever bout of pneumonia. He died that night, though he came back to us at the last possible moment. It had been so surreal, that I never cried. Perhaps I had been too tired to. Too scared to. I don't know. The whole family sat around his bed, trying to ignore the beeping and whirring of machines. Trying to ignore the wires and the needles. Trying to ignore the hiss of the oxygen mask that aided my brother as he tried valiantly to keep breathing. Trying to ignore all those sounds, the sound of the ICU symphony. We told him how much we loved him, told him that we were there. We held his hand and stroked his hair, always praying silently that he would come back as he always did. It was a scene we were all familiar with, we had gone through it so many times. Only this time, the ending wouldn't be the same.

Edward fought for a little longer than a week after that night. His condition deteriorated to the point where he was almost completely dependent on life support to keep him going, but he still hung on stubbornly. By that time, I had begun to lose hope, though I wasn't giving him up just yet. He was waging a war against sepsis, a full body infection that spread through his blood. Though they pumped him full of antibiotics, the doctors knew, just as we knew, that he didn't have much of a chance left. After a lifetime of battling infections, he had simply been too weak to continue on. Especially against a foe like severe sepsis. Edward never regained consciousness during that long week, though he had seemed to be in constant pain. We comforted him as best as we could, never knowing whether he was even aware of our presence. That didn't matter though, he was our baby, and we gave him all of our love.

It was hardly a surprise when the doctor came and talked about letting Edward go. He wasn't going to make it, everyone knew this. Every second that ticked past only saw more of his organs fail. He was dying from the inside out and no life support would be able to hold on to him any longer. The whole family had expected it sooner or later, though none of us were really ready to let him go. We were never ready. There's no way anyone could just be ready for the death of a beloved one. The doctor left us to talk amongst ourselves. We must've looked like a mess then with tear stains upon our pale faces and dark shadows under red puffy eyes. None of that mattered though. What mattered was that our five was about to become four, that my twin was dying before our very eyes. We made the decision to let him go, there was no hope, we simply knew this. None of us cried when we told the doctor of our decision, the whole thing was too surreal.

When it came time to disconnect Edward from the life support, we made a silent decision to let me hold him as he passed to the world beyond. We didn't talk about it, everyone just knew that I would be the one to hold him close and tell him that there was nothing to be afraid of. I didn't know if I believed in an afterlife before then, but from that point on, I had to believe. Just had to. I held my twin in my arms as he faded away with each tiny breath that didn't provide him the air that he needed. It was then that I began to cry. I held him close to me and sobbed out my agony with every tear that fell from my eyes. I told him repeatedly, voice broken by my sobs, that I loved him and that we would meet again one day. That I would never forget him and he would be the best twin forever. I barely noticed my family doing the same around me. Declaring their love for the brother I held in my arms. He never regained consciousness, though I believe that he died knowing that he was loved. When his took his last breath, lungs deflating, never to rise again, his face was wet with the tears of his family members. Edward died in my arms that day with my tears landing on his face, mingled with that of his father, mother, and brother.

Months later to this day, the agony of his passing hasn't been dulled by the sharp blade of time. Looking down at the picture I held so tightly in my hands, I didn't believe that the agony would ever be dulled. Perhaps toned down at some points, but never to fade. With one finger, I wipe away the tears that had fallen on the glass of the photo frame. In the picture, Edward and I had our arms around each other, smiling at the camera with the setting sun reflecting off the ocean behind us. It had been taken during one of those blessed times when the world had been perfect. But I can't think about any of that now. The pain in my chest is so great that tears again cascade down my cheeks. And I let them.

I held the picture to my chest and cried... and cried... and cried. The world shall never be the same again. This family will never be the same.

My name is Alice Cullen. I came into the world knowing I wasn't alone. Edward, my twin brother, was there with me. Tomorrow is our birthday, but for the first time in my life, he won't be there. He will never be there again.


End file.
